Ichikawa Hakugen's Logic of “None other than”

His Critical Acceptance and Development including His View of Ikkyū

Abstract

This paper discusses Ichikawa Hakugen's (1902-1986) acceptance and development of the logic of “none other than” (sokuhi no ronri) that Nishida Kitarō (1870-1945) and Suzuki Daisetz (1870-1966) constructed. Ichikawa aimed to improve and apply this logic to postwar Japan's socio-culture.

Ichikawa criticized wartime Japan's misappropriation of the Zen proverb, “Be master of mind rather than mastered by mind.” He accused Buddhist intellectuals (who commanded young people to generously devote their bodies and lives to the Buddhist Way) of their responsibilities for the war, whereas he evaluated that they lacked alternatives given their circumstances. However, Ichikawa regarded Nishida and Suzuki as indispensable intellectuals who could positively reconstruct interwar Japan's conventional view of the world, including its nationalism, imperialism, and totalitarianism. In particular, Ichikawa extracted the concept of “non-conflict” from the idea of “liberty with non-duality” in order to grasp the world as embodying “none other than.” From such a Buddhist point of view, Ichikawa conceived that there are not two lands, inherently pure or impure: the difference lies solely in our minds; therefore we should live here, the Buddha land.

This paper therefore concludes with Ichikawa's analysis of Ikkyū (1394-1481)—who embodied the Zen saying, “the non-elegantly fluid way of being is also elegantly fluid”—as one historical model for the conception of “none other than” in Japanese Zen tradition.